Cassini Finds Organic Material on Titan

Drooling Iguana · Post by **Drooling Iguana** » 2005-04-28 02:27pm

Firefox wrote:Who said all Christians were "all stupid"? He's poking fun at creationism, not Christianity in general.

Meanwhile, between this, the possibility of biological activity on Mars, and the discovery of soft tissue in a T-Rex bone, this is starting out to be a great year for science.

It's also the year in which it was decided to de-orbit the Hubble and in which the Voyager program is threatened with cancellation.

Lord Zentei · Post by **Lord Zentei** » 2005-04-28 02:30pm

Drooling Iguana wrote:It's also the year in which it was decided to de-orbit the Hubble and in which the Voyager program is threatened with cancellation.

Unfortunately, this is true. And considering that the extra price of maintaining these missions (as opposed to terminating them) is a pittance it is all the more tragic.

Post by **Kuja** » 2005-04-28 02:35pm

Darth Servo wrote:Cool. The sweatshops will have new victims to exploit.

I hope somebody powerful flings a meteor at you for saying that.

Utsanomiko · Post by **Utsanomiko** » 2005-04-28 02:53pm

Lord Zentei wrote:
Drooling Iguana wrote:It's also the year in which it was decided to de-orbit the Hubble and in which the Voyager program is threatened with cancellation.
Unfortunately, this is true. And considering that the extra price of maintaining these missions (as opposed to terminating them) is a pittance it is all the more tragic.

The year 2005 is also the year the Earth Defense Coalition should have been helping the Autobots retake their home planet of Cybertron.

But I digress. Organic material on Titan, yeah cool and all that.

wake me when they find mechanical life

General Brock · Post by **General Brock** » 2005-04-28 04:35pm

Darth Servo Wrote:

Cool. The sweatshops will have new victims to exploit.

Are you trying to get us all killed! (Looks frantically about for avenging flying saucers of DOOM)

VT-16 · Post by **VT-16** » 2005-04-28 06:23pm

The year 2005 is also the year the Earth Defense Coalition should have been helping the Autobots retake their home planet of Cybertron.

Word!

Just saw that film again for the first time in over a decade. Still awesome.

Anyway, with all the good bio-news in the solar system, maybe the people at NASA can get going on some more high-tech probes to... say... EUROPA? Or is it really true that they now only use tried and true equipment?

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2005-05-01 05:11pm

Darth Raptor wrote:
Coyote wrote:So if the basics of life are so prevelant even in a comparatively backwater system like ours, then the odds point to a galaxy potentially teeming with life, even if it is cellular, or at most complex, lichens... that's cool.
Why stop there? So many people find the galaxy's dead air as disheartening proof that the greater universe is dead. Nevermind the fact that Earth itself was teeming with complex, multicellular life for about 600 million years before it started broadcasting its own radio waves.

Why do people even assume that intelligent life would use radio waves at all? This is assuming they think like us. The idea of long-distance communication might never even occur to them. Inventions are only required to solve problems. If a given intelligent species had no difficulty communicating over large distances, it would never think of using radio or non-natural method of said communication.

Furthermore, it has been said numerous times that any sufficiently advanced communications technology would be indecipherable by us. Because of the extreme improbability of another alien race being at the same technological level as us, I think it's safe to say that most aliens are either far more primitive than us or much more advanced. Thus, we would be incapable of finding their messages among the haze even if they did use radio.

Also, I believe that FTL travel is impossible (which is why we don't see any aliens among us), and that even light speed travel is impractical, because of relativity, and how time slows down for the traveler, but not for the home planet. Nobody wants to come back home to a world 1000+ years in the future, where they would be seen as primitive barbarians from a bygone age.

Junghalli · Post by **Junghalli** » 2005-05-01 06:31pm

I hate to rain on anybody's parade here but let's not get carried away. It's just complex organic molecules, not actual life.

Braedley · Post by **Braedley** » 2005-05-01 08:27pm

Any mention of which complex organic molecules? If we're talking just hydro-carbons, then whop-de-doo, we now know that they can exist in an inhospitable environment. But if it's things like amino acids, then we can get excited.